TikTok as a platform tool: Surveying disciplinary perspectives on platforms and cultural production

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of how three different fields of study—platform studies, business studies, and information systems—can help us understand the shift in cultural production from cultural tools to platform tools and its impacts on cultural producers. “Platform tools” refer to the combined set of software-based resources that are infrastructurally integrated with data-driven platform companies. They are distinct from “cultural tools” and “software tools.” We differentiate between various types of tools by first engaging in definitional work. Then, we discuss the relevance of each discipline to study platform tools and their evolution. First, platform studies establishes platform tools as valuable entry points for interrogating “datafication,” “platformization,” and “infrastructuralization.” These processes are affected by the decisions platform companies make about their platform tools. These tool-related decisions are not made in a vacuum, but rather formed by interactions between various groups or “sides” of the platform (e.g., cultural producers, developers, and end-users). Second, interactions among users are managed by platform companies, who facilitate what business studies theorizes as “multi-sided markets.” To manage these markets, platforms make decisions about the boundaries or resources they provide. Third, information systems theory describes boundary decisions at the level of platform tools, considering how platform tools shape and are shaped by platform company decisions around access and control. These three disciplinary foci are useful not only for their conceptual contributions but also because of their methodological approaches. Platform studies offers platform historiography, business studies traces platform strategies, and information systems supplies the theoretical framework of boundary resources. We advocate that these three fields be brought into conversation to widen the study of tools to include end-users and user-generated content; reimagine tools as dynamic processes; and attend to the materiality, historicity, technicity, and relationality of platform tools.

Publication
In Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production, pp. 23–45